You want to tell your reader what
type of analysis you conducted. If you don’t, your results won’t make much
sense to the reader. You also want to tell your reader why this particular
analysis was used. What did your analysis tests for?

You have to admit, the previous
sentence is pretty intimidating. It might be hard for someone to figure out
what that sentence means or how it relates to your experiment. That’s why
it’s a good idea to report you results in an easy to understand language,
after you have stated them scientifically. Imagine that you were trying to
explain these results to a family member or friend who does not know much
about science.

When you put the three main
components together, results look something like this.

“An independent-samples t-test was
conducted to compare memory for words in sugar and no sugar conditions.
There was a significant difference in the scores for sugar (M=4.2, SD=1.3)
and no sugar (M=2.2, SD=0.84) conditions; t (8)=2.89, p = 0.20. These
results suggest that sugar really does have an effect on memory for words.
Specifically, our results suggest that when humans consume sugar, their
memory for words increases.”